


my mind is a ravine of yesterdays

by crookedspoon



Series: [std] Five Hundreds [3]
Category: Batman (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics)
Genre: Anger, Angst, Gen, Grief/Mourning, M/M, POV Jason Todd, Resentment, Spoilers, wordcount: 500
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-20
Updated: 2018-09-20
Packaged: 2019-07-14 21:52:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16049276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crookedspoon/pseuds/crookedspoon
Summary: He didn't fucking learn his lesson the first time around. Or the second.Spoilers for Batman #55.





	my mind is a ravine of yesterdays

**Author's Note:**

> For #502 "Amnesty" at slashthedrabble and the lovely anon who suggested JayDick. Sorry this is more gen than gay.
> 
> As mentioned, major spoilers for Batman #55 with allusions to RHATO #25.

It takes weeks for the news to reach him. No one has thought to share it with him. He was wrong to assume that Barbara would overlook who he is and what he's done in favor of relaying this piece of information.

It's not like he asked for an invite to the funeral, but fuck, had he known, he'd have made for Gotham post-haste instead of following his Underlife trail.

Perhaps she didn't think of him in her grief. Perhaps she didn't want to see him. Perhaps the Bat forbade her to let him know.

Or more likely, she made her own decision because she knew inviting him would've been like nuking a powder keg. Him and B wouldn't have waited for the service to begin before verbally and physically assaulting each other.

It's absurd how completely their grudges own them and shape the lives they lead, how they blind them to the world that's falling apart around them. What should any of it matter when their loved ones are dying?

Yet he can't let go.

Death is a touchy subject for Jason, not just because he's familiar with the experience and came back to tell the tale, but because B has made it that way.

"No one dies tonight," he always said, but he fails to mention that it only holds true if he can help it. Which he can't. 

What gets Jason is not that B forbids killing but that he goes out of his way to save serial killers and psychopaths from certain death only to let innocent people die in the process.

 

There he goes again, getting angry at Bruce for being a headstrong hypocrite instead of facing what's at issue.

Dick is dead. Shot three weeks ago. Buried and mourned and quite possibly enshrined in another memory of loss. And Jason finds out after it's all done. He hadn't been given the chance to attend the funeral, to pay his respects, or to grieve with the rest of them.

He's alone with the ache that sets in – and the denial: Dick can't be dead. He faked his death again. Dick can't be dead. The source was unreliable.

Dick

can't

be

dead.

Jason never got around to confessing what he truly feels, beyond the rivalry, the admiration, the bitterness and the resentment. You'd think that death would straighten out your priorities, but if anything, it's messed them up more. Too much shit to deal at the time. A revenge to plot, Batman to torment, Gotham to clean up. There's always something.

But he's also been putting it off.

Jason's attraction was no secret to Dick, although Jason has taken pains to appear casual about it. He had no qualms with privately admitting that he was in love, but he couldn't risk Dick finding out.

After all, he might have felt the same. And Jason doesn't deserve to be loved back. He's proved it time and again.

Hence no information, no invites, no solace in his grief.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "On Disappearing" by Major Jackson.
> 
> Obviously, I don't think Dick is/stays dead, but occasionally I like working with hypotheticals.


End file.
